It is late autumn 1997 and seventy-four-year-old Benjamin Digby lives for two things in his golden yearshis dear wife, Emily, and the game of golfin that order, of course. Now as a winter storm quickly approaches Montana, Ben sets out to squeeze in one last round. Despite the rapidly declining weather conditions, Ben manages to shoot exceptionally well. He exits the seventeenth green with seventy strokes marked on his score card. Although he is certain to record his best score ever, Ben is still not satisfied. A par on the eighteenth will result in him shooting his agea rare feat in the game of golf. As the wind pelts him with ice and snow, Ben struggles to stand on the eighteenth tee, forcing a club attendant to risk his own safety to rescue him from the raging blizzard. After Ben is returned to the course clubhouse, he believes his one chance at the rare accomplishment has passed. But what Ben does not know is that he has already set into motion a chain of events with the power to upend his life and transform a community. Unfinished Business shares the entertaining tale of a senior golfers quirky journey after he attempts to accomplish a rare feat in the midst of a Montana blizzard.
Michelle Mickey Grant is a rising star in a prestigious Texas law firm. Unfortunately, her career goals firm came with a heavy pricethe demise of her marriage to Tyler Grant, who now holds primary custody of their teenager, Reagan. As the holidays approach, Mickey focuses on winning the next case without any idea that her world is about to shatter. Someone is abducting teenage girls from local mall parking lots and leaving few clues as to their whereabouts. After Reagan goes missing, on Mickeys watch, just days before Christmas, a suspect is arrested and convicted for the capital murder of one such abductee. Following the trial, the police all but close their files on the open cases of the other abductees. Mickey is haunted by lingering questions, with only one potential source for the truthdeath row inmate Willie Lee FlynnMickey tries and fails to gain his cooperation, leaving her to rely on her legal resources and the court system to exert pressure on him. As she does Mickey is thrust into a series of treacherous events, leading her down a dangerous path that she hopes finally points to the truth, no matter the threat to her career and her own safety. In this legal thriller, a determined attorney inserts herself in the most important case of her life in an attempt to learn what became of her daughter when she disappeared outside a Texas mall.
Dorothy Swayne, Lupe Sylvia-Sotomayor, and veteran legal secretary Gertie Chase have been working for an exceedingly difficult Texas attorney for eighteen years, five months, and twelve days when they suddenly find themselves jobless after she dies at her desk. The deceased lawyer’s greedy son has designs on the office and demands that the women spend their last two weeks on the firm’s payroll referring out all his mother’s cases to other attorneys. As the three co-workers comply, they happen upon an unknown case file that involves Gertie’s childhood friend whose pipe fitter husband died of a rare asbestos-related cancer. When the women learn that their deceased boss never took action on the matter, Gertie decides to handle the case while impersonating her former boss. After she enlists her two cohorts to help, they embark on a journey filled with complications and consequences and where only time will tell if they will solve the case or if one or all of them will end up behind bars. Home Cookin’ shares the entertaining tale of a seasoned legal secretary as she and her two co-workers take on a complicated case after their boss falls from grace and dies at her desk.
Jackson Garrett, a talented lawyer with an abusive childhood background reaches great heights in the courtroom while his past begins to catch up with him. In book one Jack is recruited to take lead on a quirky lawsuit with a contentious opposing counsel that threatens the very viability of two related corporate defendants taking the reader on a series of unpredictable twists and turns culminating in a riveting court trial. In book two Jack, having burned out with the rigors of a trial lawyer assumes the small town law firm of his former mentor to make a go at it as a “people practice” but with the mundane day-to-day office practice Jack loses his interest and turns his attention away from the practice when he learns that the old house in which he practices law has a ghostly inhabitant and his infatuation slowly jeopardizes his home, family, and his sanity.
Three pumpkins with physical challenges spend October in a popular pumpkin patch and each compete with the others to be purchased by a family and taken to a home. When Halloween comes and goes they find themselves abandoned and alone until a scarecrow offers to take him to a place that will accept them.
Brian Herne's White Hunters: The Golden Age of African Safaris is the story of seventy years of African adventure, danger, and romance. East Africa affects our imagination like few other places: the sight of a charging rhino goes directly to the heart; the limitless landscape of bony highlands, desert, and mountain is, as Isak Dinesen wrote, of "unequalled nobility." White Hunters re-creates the legendary big-game safaris led by Selous and Bell and the daring ventures of early hunters into unexplored territories, and brings to life such romantic figures as Cape-to-Cairo Grogan, who walked 4,000 miles for the love of a woman, and Dinesen's dashing lover, Denys Finch. Witnesses to the richest wildlife spectacle on the earth, these hunters were the first conservationists. Hard-drinking, infatuated with risk, and careless in love, they inspired Hemingway's stories and movies with Clark Gable and Gregory Peck.
Already one of the most urbanized nations in South Asia, Pakistan is projected to have a majority of its population living in cities within three decades. This demographic shift will alter Pakistan’s politics and threaten its stability, but the political and security implications of Pakistan’s urbanization remain underanalyzed. This report examines urbanization as a potential driver of long-term insecurity and instability, with particular attention to the cities of Karachi, Lahore, and Quetta. Drawing on demographic trends, election results, and survey data, the authors conclude that urbanization may fuel anti-American sentiment and help recruitment by transnational Islamist groups (but not necessarily Islamist political parties) in the short term. Urbanization is also likely to increase popular demand for political reform in Pakistan. In the near future, a Pakistani government more directly accountable to its electorate might be less willing to cooperate with the United States in unpopular security policies. In the long run, however, a Pakistani government more responsive to its citizens could be a better security partner for the United States. By spurring Pakistani policymakers to focus on provision of good governance and public services rather than on scapegoating external actors, political reform may eventually help reduce anti-American attitudes.
During a lifetime in professional sports, Jim Finks touched nearly every rung on the ladder. As a player during the National Football League's Golden Era of the 1950's, Finks suffered a broken neck making a tackle and later survived to become a Pro Bowl quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He coached Paul Hornung to a Heisman Trophy at Notre Dame in 1956 before cutting his teeth as general manager of the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League. From Canada, Finks headed south to help build Super Bowl teams as GM of the Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears. He even brought his winning touch to baseball as president of the Chicago Cubs in 1984 before rescuing the New Orleans Saints from pigskin purgatory and elevating them to playoff respectability. Finks spent 26 years as an NFL general manager and was a strong candidate to replace Pete Rozelle as commissioner in 1989 while earning NFL executive of the year awards in 1973 and 1987. Jim Finks was admired for his honesty and integrity in a business where the shafts and knives often fill the air. Finks was a unique individual, and "It's Been a Pleasure" will impart even more of that wisdom.
“We are not worth more, they are not worth less.” This is the mantra of S. Brian Willson and the theme that runs throughout his compelling psycho-historical memoir. Willson’s story begins in small-town, rural America, where he grew up as a “Commie-hating, baseball-loving Baptist,” moves through life-changing experiences in Viet Nam, Nicaragua and elsewhere, and culminates with his commitment to a localized, sustainable lifestyle. In telling his story, Willson provides numerous examples of the types of personal, risk-taking, nonviolent actions he and others have taken in attempts to educate and effect political change: tax refusal—which requires simplification of one’s lifestyle; fasting—done publicly in strategic political and/or therapeutic spiritual contexts; and obstruction tactics—strategically placing one’s body in the way of “business as usual.” It was such actions that thrust Brian Willson into the public eye in the mid-’80s, first as a participant in a high-profile, water-only “Veterans Fast for Life” against the Contra war being waged by his government in Nicaragua. Then, on a fateful day in September 1987, the world watched in horror as Willson was run over by a U.S. government munitions train during a nonviolent blocking action in which he expected to be removed from the tracks and arrested. Losing his legs only strengthened Willson’s identity with millions of unnamed victims of U.S. policy around the world. He provides details of his travels to countries in Latin America and the Middle East and bears witness to the harm done to poor people as well as to the environment by the steamroller of U.S. imperialism. These heart-rending accounts are offered side by side with inspirational stories of nonviolent struggle and the survival of resilient communities Willson’s expanding consciousness also uncovers injustices within his own country, including insights gained through his study and service within the U.S. criminal justice system and personal experiences addressing racial injustices. He discusses coming to terms with his identity as a Viet Nam veteran and the subsequent service he provides to others as director of a veterans outreach center in New England. He draws much inspiration from friends he encounters along the way as he finds himself continually drawn to the path leading to a simpler life that seeks to “do no harm.&rdquo Throughout his personal journey Willson struggles with the question, “Why was it so easy for me, a ’good’ man, to follow orders to travel 9,000 miles from home to participate in killing people who clearly were not a threat to me or any of my fellow citizens?” He eventually comes to the realization that the “American Way of Life” is AWOL from humanity, and that the only way to recover our humanity is by changing our consciousness, one individual at a time, while striving for collective cultural changes toward “less and local.” Thus, Willson offers up his personal story as a metaphorical map for anyone who feels the need to be liberated from the American Way of Life—a guidebook for anyone called by conscience to question continued obedience to vertical power structures while longing to reconnect with the human archetypes of cooperation, equity, mutual respect and empathy.
This book does not offer any miracles, although it does offer a better opportunity for someone to get results, for one who is prepared to get out of the victim role and take a positive step into seeing what they can do for themselves. By reading this book, you will realise the significance of continuous learning. And that’s how philosophy tries to discover the nature of truth and knowledge, to find what is of basic value and importance in life. This is about the relationships between humanity and nature and between the individual and the society.
After serving in the Vietnam War, S. Brian Willson became a radical, nonviolent peace protester and pacifist, and this memoir details the drastic governmental and social change he has spent his life fighting for. Chronicling his personal struggle with a government he believes to be unjust, Willson sheds light on the various incarnations of his protests of the U.S. government, including the refusal to pay taxes, public fasting, and, most famously, public obstruction. On September 1, 1987, Willson was run over by a U.S. government munitions train during a nonviolent blocking action in which he expected to be removed from the tracks. Providing a full look into the tragic event, Willson, who lost his legs in the incident, discusses how the subsequent publicity propelled his cause toward the national consciousness. Now, 23 years later, Willson tells his story of social injustice, nonviolent struggle, and the so-called American way of life.
I was recently in a brainstorming session with market research and R&D managers at a Fortune 50 client. The marketing manager turns to the R&D technical lead and asks, “can you give me a list of all possible technologies out there?” She was speaking the language of high level summary of the universe of possibilities. The technical lead, on the other hand, translated it as “give me information on the technologies we are capable of delivering in the near future.” Simple miscommunication? Little business impact? Not if you’re trying to stretch the innovation possibilities and the R&D lead disqualifi es longer term technologies because they’re not ready now. That’s one reason why innovation at some companies looks like the same old stuff re-packaged.
When the mouse-ship carrying Joseph the Bellmaker and his daughter Mariel runs afoul of a pirate rat king, they are mercilessly tossed overboard. Washed ashore and certain that her father is dead, Mariel vowsrevenge.
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